What Trump’s New Gender Definition Will Mean for Intersex People

It was reported earlier this week by the New York Times that the White House is considering a new memo that would limit the definition of gender, essentially erasing the identity of millions of transgender and intersex people across the US.

The leaked proposal from the Department of Health and Human Services reads: “Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth.

“The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”

The proposal asks the administration to set a definition of gender “grounded in science” that once assigned at birth cannot be changed.

Transgender rights activists and celebrities have come out in full force against the proposal.

“Warning LGBT Friends. They won’t be happy till you’re gone. Might seem I’m being alarmist, but it’s been coming since the ride down the escalator,” Cher tweeted.

“The memo has caused outrage because its goal is to define gender transition out of existence. Its aim is to discriminate against trans people, declaring them to be deluded or deceptive, their lived genders irrelevant,” wrote Dr. Cary Gabriel Costello for the Trans Advocate.

“Laws don’t determine our existence – *we* determine our existence.”

“This latest administration effort to legislate trans folks out of existence is yet another example of why the fight for gender equity must be intersectional and necessarily must include trans folks,” wrote Laverne Cox.

“In indigenous cultures all over the world gender existed beyond the binary and folks who we would call trans today held sacred places in those culture. Western colonialism drove those trans folks to the margins but we have always been here.”

“Laws don’t determine our existence – *we* determine our existence,” argued trans activist Chelsea Manning. 

“It’s our weapon, our shelter, our energy, our healer, our truth – we will keep moving forward – we will keep fighting – existence is *our* only law.”

But what about Intersex people – how will this policy affect them?

“As is so often the case, intersex people’s lives and needs go unrecognized,” argued Dr. Costello.

First, it’s important to distinguish between those who are trans and those who are born intersex. According to the UN, Intersex people are those born with any variety of sex characteristics that do not fit the traditional binary of male and female. Intersex people could be born with both sets of genitals, or chromosome patterns. Most intersex traits appear at both, but some develop later. Chromosomal intersex variations may not even be physically apparent at all.

Between 0.05 percent and 1.7 percent of the population is intersex. Being intersex relates only to your biological sex characteristics and is different from your sexual orientation. Someone who is intersex can also be straight, gay, or bisexual, they could identify as male, female, both or neither. 

In a piece for the New York Times, Alicia Roth Weigel explains her experience of being intersex. “From the second I was born, decisions were made by medical professionals about which of two gender categories my body should fit into,” she wrote. 

“I was ultimately born with female anatomy on the outside but with internal testes instead of ovaries. As a result, doctors, alongside my parents, decided when I was still a baby that I would be raised as a girl. This decision has shaped the course of my entire life but was made without my consent.”

“From the second I was born, decisions were made by medical professionals about which of two gender categories my body should fit into. This decision has shaped the course of my entire life but was made without my consent.”

The changes to federal civil rights laws that the Trump administration wants to enact would restrict a person’s gender “as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals a person is born with,” and that any outliers would be determined by genetic testing.

Weigel points out that her body would not match either male or female if tested, “My body would throw this Trumpian test for a loop — my naturally occurring genitalia don’t match the “correct” genetic code in this forced-binary paradigm that seeks to override biology.”

She also questions the memo’s description of gender as “unchangeable”, pointing again to her own body, which had to undergo rigorous medical treatments at various times in her life to make sure she appeared typically female.

“For me, surgery to remove my gonads as an infant was the first stop on the track to female — but the train didn’t stop there. My family was consulted about how 5 feet 8 inches seemed like an optimal height, and informed on how hormone levels and sequences could be measured to achieve just that. The ideal breast size for my frame was also discussed; I can still remember the male doctor nodding approvingly. I was also given a dilator before even hitting my teens, so my vagina would be ready for penetrative sex…

“Our battle as intersex people has been for recognition of the sex spectrum, and for respecting our physical sex diversity.”

“Why were all these decisions fast-tracked onto my body? Not because they were medically necessary — I would have been perfectly healthy just living and growing as little old me — but because they were vital to ‘normalize’ me.”

Dr Costello, who is also intersex, questioned these forced medical treatments on young intersex people in a bid to fit them into the binary of male or female. “All of us have been fighting for social acceptance, for an end to infant genital surgeries that rob us of the capacity for sexual sensation, and against the stigmatizing and concealment of physical sex variance,” he writes.

“Our battle as intersex people has been for recognition of the sex spectrum, and for respecting our physical sex diversity.”

It is important to know where this memo is coming from.It has been written by the Director of the HHS Office of Civil Rights, Roger Severino. He has no special knowledge of the medical issues he’s writing about and he was hired to please Trump’s conservative base. He’s been on record as an advocate for conversion therapy and has said being LGBT+ is “against biology.”

The point is that gender, biologically, is on a spectrum, and for a government to restrict or control that will only do more harm than good. People don’t fit into binaries.

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